Financially troubled former Australian Internet porn king Greg Lasrado's news went from bad to worse May 3: His valuable block of land on Kangaroo Point is going on the auction block in a few weeks. The announcement came a week after companies tied to him were put into receivership by a creditor.
The two receiver managers, John Park and Lachlan McIntosh of KordaMentha, were appointed by a group of financiers known as Velocity 10 Pty Ltd. to manage Lasrado's principal operations, Gregbury, Cougar Investments, GDL Investments, and Miajoy, according to Australian press reports which said the Kangaroo Point land block will be handled by the Ray White group.
Last September, the Australian Taxation Office – to which Lasrado was said to have owed hundreds of thousands in back taxes – ordered Commonwealth Bank to appoint receivership for GDL Investments, the company through which Lasrado bought the Kangaro Point land for about $2.88 million in 1999.
That capped several months of financial troubles for Lasrado that ranged from a bounced check written to a tree surgeon to $300,000 in cash said to be stolen from his bedroom and a court fight over his high-ticket credit-card spending and gambling.
The Kangaroo Point land is now said to be worth $5-7 million.
Meanwhile, other creditors are said to be stepping up demanding their payback from Lasrado, including former horse trainer Rob Heathcote, who told Australian reporters he was forced to take legal action. "[Lasrado] was a typical rich guy who bought some horses and was happy when they were winning, but basically did not want to pay his bills for them," he was quoted as saying.
Lasrado also has had experience with American law enforcement: He settled with the Federal Trade Commission in 2001 over a scheme hijacking surfers by copying existing sites, putting coded instructions into the copycat pages, and redirecting surfers to various adult sites while disabling their exit and back buttons and swamping them with windows showing porn and ads.
Lasrado isn't the only member of his family in trouble with the law, either: His father, Gregory Dominc Lasrado, M.D., was suspended from practicing medicine in early April after allegations arose that he had groped female patients, asked them for dates, bragged to them about his sexual affairs, and prescribed a reputed "date rape" drug, flunitrazepam, "in suspicious circumstances."
